Twins officially eliminated from wild card race after late-season collapse

A slow-moving collapse that began in mid-August finally reached its bitter conclusion on Friday night in front of a hometown crowd that was not shy about voicing its displeasure. The Twins, who at one point this month had playoff odds north of 95%, saw that number dwindle day by disappointing day until Friday, when the clock finally ran out on their chances to salvage their season. ADVERTISEMENT The 7-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles officially eliminated the Twins from the wild-card race.

They will wrap up their season on Sunday afternoon rather than in the playoffs as they had hoped and expected for much of the season. The Twins overcame a 7-13 start to the season, bonded together around a rally sausage — a piece of encased meat that seemed to bring a bit of luck with it when it showed up in the dugout — to revive their season with a 12-game winning streak and then spent much of the summer playing like one of the best teams in baseball. The postseason seemed inevitable.



Until it wasn’t. ADVERTISEMENT The Twins started to crumble in August, the beginning of a downward spiral that at times felt more difficult to watch by the day. Injuries depleted their rotation and took out some of their top position players — Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton among them — for long periods of time.

The bullpen gave away late leads in games that looked like sure wins more than a few times. And the offense was inconsistent, ranking near the bottom of the majors in many offensive categories over the last six weeks of the season. That same offense went missing for much of Friday night, collecting just two hits in the first eight innings of the game that sealed their fate.

For the second time in three seasons, the Twins ran out of steam in the final month of the season. ADVERTISEMENT This time, though, seemed even more crushing because the Twins had every opportunity to right the ship and simply couldn’t. The Detroit Tigers, who sold off at the trade deadline and at one point had 0.

2% odds of making the playoffs, took advantage, finally surging past the Twins last Sunday. The Twins came into the 2024 season with high expectations after snapping their 19-year postseason winless streak a year ago. A year later, somehow, improbably, they’re a fourth-place team, and will be sitting at home in October, spending the winter dissecting how and where things went wrong.

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